I need to make this work with docker containers, using virtual machines is not an option.

The usual path is to mount the volume either on the host or via a Docker volume, and then use the docker run -v option to attach it to the container when you docker run it.

Note that you will routinely need to delete and recreate Docker containers to make changes like, say, attaching different volumes to containers. This is where I say a VM-based solution would be “less fragile” than a Docker-based solution: anything you do in an interactive shell in a Docker container will get lost when you delete the container.